Field Study
by aphelion-orion
Summary: Sin's passion for words leads him on his greatest quest yet: trying to figure out what it means to be "normal."


**Notes:** Developed from a runaway joke about the Kiske-Badguy school of parenting: "Everything can be solved with patience, understanding, and a sword to the face." Not Overture-compliant because obvs.

* * *

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Great passions, it is said, can elevate the soul to great things.

Passions were what had driven humans to build the pyramids, circumnavigate the globe, and launch other humans into space. (On the flip side, they were responsible for kicking the collective butt of civilization back into the Dark Ages several times over. Hey, nobody ever said passions were strictly a good thing).

Sin did not know that people had once floundered around in outer space. He also hadn't seen what-remained-of-the-Great-Pyramids, since his parents had yet to schedule a villainous evildoer hunt at an Ancient Egyptian burial site. What he knew of circumnavigatory efforts mostly amounted to a firm belief that ancient sailors had been able to see the future (sea serpents? check. multi-headed man-eating fish? check. monster krakens? delicious, succulent check).

He did, however, have a passion that could accomplish the great feat of keeping him out of trouble, at least for the amount of time it compelled him to spend with his nose stuck in a book.

When he chose to open his mouth, though, Sin's passion could lead to a spectacular amount of trouble. This was because he was all of three-and-a-half years old, and his passion were words.

He loved and hoarded words the way other people love and hoard gold coins, though the fascination of the yellow metal pieces continued to elude him. Mostly, they smelled of whatever place they'd been in last, which often happened to be a questionably laundered back pocket, and the only thing you could do with them was exchange them for some things that actually smelled _good_. (The trade always seemed rather unfair in Sin's opinion, even when his parents insisted that the item he was getting in return was a rip-off). All in all, Sin felt that whoever was trying to collect the most coins was pursuing a rather sad and limited activity compared to him, a collector of the immeasurable wealth of language.

A good word, immeasurable.

They'd run out of coins long before he would ever run out of words.

Nobody seemed to know quite how many words there were in the world, not even his parents, and Sin was confident that between the two of them, they knew almost everything there was to know, so it would be his job to take care of the word count.

He'd started out rather modestly with a dictionary of the English language, bound in blue leather with a delicate leaf pattern snaking along the spine. It had been a gift from Parent A (Mom) for his first birthday, or at least, for the day they'd all agreed Sin's birth – a very loosely defined word, birth – might have occurred.

It was easily the best gift ever, and a good reason to ensure that his traveling bag was always clean, dry, and devoid of old socks, candy apples or the drippy bits of monster loot. Sin wasn't sure if Parent A had anticipated such an outcome (Mom could be sneaky like that), but he was plenty sure that concern over the future of his communication skills might have been something of a factor in the choice of gift, if Parent A's vindicated looks to Parent B were any indication.

Since then, the dictionary had been joined by several more word collections of Sin's own creation, scribbled on simple paper notepads but no less valuable for their contents.

There was a dictionary of military terms, also known as the dictionary-on-how-to-stealth-swear, containing nuggets of wisdom such as "snafu", "fubar" and "bohica." There was also a dictionary of "you're not making a lick of sense" terms that was growing rapidly with every passing day, mostly thanks to Parent B (Dad) and his use of arcane, mystifying terms such as "lightsaber," "twinkie" and "jeggings." There was even a growing Parent A-to-Parent B dictionary, because 'rentspeak was one of the most evolved languages in the history of the planet.

It was so evolved, in fact, that the 'rents didn't even need to talk out loud half the time, and instead resorted to passing looks back and forth in a sort of psychic ping-pong match that tended to leave Sin feeling confused and not a little left out.

He consoled himself with the thought that the spoken vocabulary was already plenty difficult to decipher. Not only did it include a healthy mix of words from the dictionary of military terms and the dictionary of "you're not making a lick of sense," it also included rules that said insults could work equally well as terms of endearment and arcane conditions that governed when it was appropriate to switch to psychic staring matches because the 'rents had to discuss things out of the range of Sin's delicate young ears (hah!).

The most consistently baffling and dangerous thing about 'rentspeak was that a minuscule change in inflection could mark the difference between "One more word and you've earned yourself a blade to the face," and "I'm two seconds away from snogging your tonsils out." For Sin, it marked the difference between staying around to admire the fireworks and running for the hills to escape their besotted cooing.

While the discovery of unusual words was very enlightening and could afford hours of entertainment – particularly in the form of arguments with Parent B over whether or not "hippopotomonstrosesquipealian" was really a word or not (it was) – Sin also held a secret appreciation for the simple words, all those small chunks that made up everyday conversation.

Out of those simple words, he liked adjectives the best because they were the chocolate sprinkles of language. Not necessary, strictly speaking, in the same way a decent fight didn't need magic, or the 'rents didn't really need his back-up to bring down a flock of carnivorous butterflies, but damn if adding any of these things didn't bring color and excitement to the world. Put him in a snappy coat, or an adverb in front of an adjective, and watch their awesomeness multiply tenfold.

Every once in a while, Sin would flip back the metaphorical lid on his impressive collection of adjectives, pick one out and roll it around in his mind until he was sure he understood what it meant.

Usually, this involved applying the word to every concept he knew until he figured out exactly where it belonged, and with whom. Some words belonged mostly with Gears, like "odoriferous" and "rampaging" and "really very pissed." Others belonged only with food, like "crispy" and "crunchy" and "meant-to-be-eaten-with-a-fork-so-use-it." Still others mainly belonged in the company of girls, like "cute" or "lovely" or "free pie." Granted, the last one was a bit of a generous inclusion, but Sin maintained that adding "pie" as a descriptor could instantly improve pretty much any subject in existence, even if it could earn him the occasional scalding critique from Parent B.

And then there were those words that didn't seem to belong anywhere in particular.

Sin didn't like those because they tended to get lodged in his brain like a lexical fishbone, nagging him to figure them out. Usually, he managed to wrestle them into submission on his own after plenty of thinking, and if all else failed, he could always go ask Parent A, who was good at explaining tricky stuff like "good" and "evil" or "right" and "wrong" (mostly by pointing out all the things dictionaries couldn't really talk about, like pirate ethics and ethics for pirates' good friends who occasionally stop by for visits).

In general, though, Sin felt that a word earned by doing the heavy lifting himself was better than a word explained by someone else.

The _mot du jour_ was of this infuriatingly nebulous variety, and it was a really, really tough customer. It had been stuck in his head for the better part of two weeks now, and he wasn't any closer to figuring out where to put it. This, he was beginning to suspect, was mainly because he was sorely lacking in reference material.

The word in question was "normal."

* * *

The dictionary had the following to offer on the word "normal":

1: perpendicular, especially: perpendicular to a tangent at a point of tangency  
2 a: according with, constituting, or not deviating from a norm, rule or principle  
b: conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern  
3: occurring naturally  
4: free from mental disorder: sane

Sin found this information to be supremely unhelpful.

He had given himself a whole day for doing some intense thinking about the subject, and could now see he was going to need it.

Investigating the perpendicularity of "normal" seemed like a waste of time. Most humans, as well as most Gears, spent a good chunk of their time in an upright position relative to the ground, unless they were either directionally challenged or Parent B.

This put the starting point of his investigation at "norms, rules and principles."

With his index finger stabbing the fine print of the dictionary, Sin sat still for a while, puffing up his cheeks. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, as they say, but he couldn't even get his foot out the front door without landing on the ground in a graceless heap.

He didn't even need to look as far as his friends in the cargo acquisition and reallocation business to get confused, all he needed to do was look at the 'rents.

Parent A appreciated rules, insofar as they didn't get in the way of his sense of justice. If they did, he had a very intricate system in place that determined whether he bent the unpalatable rules, tried to fix them, or descended upon the situation with a fury worthy of all God's archangels and a flaming (metaphorically speaking) sword.

Sin hadn't been around to witness that one, but Parent B had enough anecdotes about what he called the "I'm Ky-fucking-Kiske. You and what army?"-mode to paint some fairly vivid pictures and make Sin feel a tad sorry for the poor sod on the receiving end who really had no one but himself to blame.

In general, though, Parent A was the go-to person for the upholding of rules, some of which Sin understood (don't eat anything that talks) and some of which he didn't (it's rude to stare even when a girl really, really wants you to stare).

Parent B, for his part, thought rules were made to be broken – or punched, or set on fire, or launched into orbit – yet he didn't appreciate it when Sin tried to disregard the rules of logic or basic math. (Sin was totally down with the whole "one plus one makes two" thing, unless it was about pie, in which case the only viable solution was "zero").

Parent B also liked to point out – and often to Parent A's face – that Parent A was violating some cosmic law of probability simply by existing, so there definitely was a kind of obscure set of rules that applied to his corner of the universe, as well.

Sin noisily let the air out of his cheeks and decided to move on to the next line, which dealt with standards and regularities.

Being awesome kind of precluded being average, and in Sin's wholly unbiased opinion, the 'rents were easily the most awesomest 'rents in the history of forever, no contest. It followed, then, that as the product of shady mad murderbot science designed to get back at them their love, this made Sin doubly awesome by proxy.

If he needed to support these claims (he didn't), all he had to do was open a history book.

Granted, the exploits found therein were mostly Parent A's, on account of Parent B's exploits usually requiring a cover-up, profuse apologies or frantic repudiations. However, Parent A's neat handwriting in the margins ensured that credit was given where credit was due ("That time your father went full-on Gear in the middle of an air battle and I had to keep the gunners from splattering his benighted ass him all over Belgium" or "Got sick for a week, your father took over the army. God knows what he actually did while I was in delirium, but it did win us back Prague and I was warm," though that one meant Sin had to take a break from the history lesson to go scrub the idea of parents being affectionate from his mind.)

And then there were those books that desperately tried to find ways to make Parent A even more awesome (or something) by inventing stories that made the 'rents alternately groan or chuckle ("No, I'm pretty sure I was not sent to Earth via a bolt of divine lightning," or "Why is this talking about chest binding– oh it's one of _those_. Sol, kindly stop laughing and burn it.")

Sin was starting to think that whoever had written that proverb on journeys had been rather foolishly optimistic about them.

He rubbed the spot on his forehead that was starting to feel rather dented from smacking into all these invisible roadblocks, and tried to move on to the matter of natural occurrence.

Unfortunately, being the product of shady mad murderbot science kind of got in the way of using himself as a test subject. Then there was that whole confusing mess with Parent B that Sin still didn't get, only that it involved a lot of things burning for a really long time and that asking about it usually made Dad go stone-cold quiet and then leave for a week to go punch big angry things back to a mono-cellular level.

Granted, this was just what Sin surmised from the fact that Parent B came back one part gore-streaked, one part charbroiled and three parts completely exhausted, and from how it usually took him another week to stop having awkward psychic 'rentspeak conversations with Mom and grudgingly start using real words again.

Parent A was a bit more forthcoming on the subject and didn't really believe in punching big angry things (unless it was absolutely necessary or they happened to be Parent B), though Sin held no delusions that this was due to anything other than his solemn commitment to full disclosure. He could totally see Mom's brain-to-mouth filters working every time to pick out all the details Sin wasn't supposed to know and that irked him to no end.

Bottom line, though, was that Dad might have kind of not been a Gear once upon a time (and wasn't that a weird thought), and that nobody was quite sure how things had moved from him kind of maybe not being a Gear to the world being on fire for way, way longer than mostly anybody had been alive.

All that left him with, then, was Parent A, who seemed to be the closest to a natural occurrence out of the three of them.

To Sin's vague knowledge on the subject and the chagrin of ecclesiastical scholars everywhere, Parent A had been born human to human parents the human way – another weird thought for somebody who could still hazily sort of recall feeling very bored inside a glass tube.

Yet, nobody else seemed to feel like considering it very much, least of all Dad, who would get this weird, suckerpunched look at times for reasons Sin had the sneaking suspicion he would have to be an adult to understand.

Since that was still a few lightyears down the road (Dad's rough estimate) and Sin didn't really feel like venturing into philosophy ("if nobody else thinks you're normal, does it still mean you are?"), he decided to skip to the last point, sanity.

His family had a lot of discussions about sanity, particularly when it came to battle plans, food, or the incineration of tithes collectors. Sanity also had a special place in the dictionary of 'rentspeak, where Sin had rather decisively filed it under "BLERGH" (a category that would, a few lightyears down the road, reluctantly be amended to read "Putting up with All Your Stupid Crap Because Snuggles").

Outside of that, though, sanity roulette was a pretty fun family activity.

Parent A often found Parent B's sanity open to debate (sometimes with pyrotechnic support), while Parent B found Parent A's sanity open to debate (sometimes with pyrotechnic support). Sometimes, Sin found both their sanity open to debate (mostly when it came to pie and girls, though he would never say so out loud for fear of having his outfit meet an untimely end).

And then there were all the occasions where both the 'rents found Sin's sanity open to debate (without pyrotechnic support because "Nobody ever understood basic morality from a boot to the head"), though that often ended up coming down to the questionable sanity of either Parent A or B.

With a snap, Sin shut the dictionary and flopped backwards into the grass, his perpendicularity quota exhausted for the day.

He'd never known field research could be this tiring, though he was starting to suspect that he wasn't making progress because he was lacking observable matter to begin with.

What he really needed was some good reference material.

* * *

On account of the whole "things burning for way, way longer than mostly anybody had been alive" issue, there wasn't a lot of reference material on Gears.

What little there existed, the 'rents liked to use for teaching him how _not_ to think about Gears, although they occasionally disagreed whether "abyssal hellspawn" wasn't a scientifically accurate term after all.

There were no books of any kind on half-Gears, given that, for all anyone knew, there were only two of them in the entire world (a fact that tended to make Dizzy do the disappointed wing-droop thing, which in turn made Sin do the disappointed wing-droop thing, at least for as long as it took for somebody to locate a pie).

There were, however, a ton of books written on humans and their day-to-day activities, so Sin thought it would be a good idea to start there. At least, he could half-trust their wisdom to half-apply to him, too.

Given the vaguely pear-shaped state of the world and the general preoccupation with building new things and keeping them Gear-free (something that amused Sin to no end whenever he took on a pest-control job), his best bet were the back-alley sometimes-black-sometimes-gray markets in the lower tiers of Zepp.

The 'rents had a rule against unsupervised wandering in Zepp, but all he really had to do was wait for a trip where they were busy doing secret 'rent things (such as meeting informants that weren't supposed to know Sin existed) so he could quietly slip away for a bit. After all, what the 'rents didn't know wouldn't kill him.

The back-alley markets of the sky city were a grotesque wonderland of sights, sounds and shady business deals. Contrary to ground-bound markets, which had things such as cute little stalls, neat displays of their wares and vendors hollering their prices into the morning air, this was a market where every inch of space spent on decoration and flair was an inch that could have gone to another box of scrap metal.

Nobody bothered to shout much, partly because they assumed that anybody roaming the alleys already knew what they were looking for and partly because their wares were nothing so much as an immense collection of Stuff of Uncertain Uses.

Parent B likely could have named the things piling up at every corner, though he rarely bothered to do so, and when he did, it was safely out of earshot and Zeppian airspace. On some visits, he would even disappear for a while and return with a bulky sack whose contents met their end in some deserted wasteland ideally suited for a spectacular explosion.

"If you find anything that has buttons on it, for fuck's sake don't press them," had been one of Sin's first lessons on how to explore abandoned ruins and evil underground laboratories, and Zepp was full of people whose life's mission it was to press all the buttons everywhere and maybe leave a rock on them just to see what would happen.

Given the overabundance of things with buttons on them that he wasn't supposed to press, finding a place with a decent variety of reference material was a lot harder than it should have been.

Granted, what Zeppians considered reference material was a bit of a broad term to begin with. They thought of everything as "historical artifacts," even if it resembled nothing so much as a big pile of not-touching-that-with-a-barge-pole-because-ew, which meant Sin had to go digging through the world's biggest scrap paper dump.

After working his way through a shipping container's worth of faded love letters, little books with flimsy locks and vague approximations of ponies on them, paper napkins with nonsensical number sequences, and weird leather-bound booklets that told him people of the past had used lunchtime for anything other than lunch, Sin found himself wishing for just one person who shared Mom's fondness for color-coded and alphabetized things. He was also wishing he didn't have to use both hands to keep a paper avalanche at bay, just so he could do something about the persistent itch in his nose.

His eyes were starting to glaze over – something that not even the sight of a man fighting crime in a pair of red underpants on the outside could fix (bad idea if he ever saw one) – and he'd have to head back soon, anyway. It would mean having the stupid word nagging him for another couple of months, until whenever the 'rents felt another trip to Zepp was in order, but what could he do.

Sighing, Sin steeled himself against the prospect and was just about to surface, when something caught his eye in the musty, papery depths. He couldn't even say what it was in that moment, but that didn't matter much to his arm, which shot out to grab it before the thing could be swallowed up by the encroaching flood.

He emerged from the crate with a mighty sneeze and spent the next few minutes shaking himself off, much to the irritation of the vendor, who soon found himself covered in a good inch of yellow dust.

The shakedown didn't work so well for his find, though, which started to crackle and flake, very nearly dissolving the thing that had drawn Sin's attention in the first place.

There was a girl on the cover.

Girls had the magical ability to get Sin to stop whatever he was doing and look, though he'd ended up walking through a couple of walls as a result. This girl made him _really_ look, to the point where he completely forgot about paying attention to the vendor, who knew when he'd landed a customer and was eagerly swapping out his price lists. But who could blame him, when she was wearing the singularly most fantastic outfit he'd ever seen – lace-up jeans? fringe jacket? awesome lightning print? why hadn't he thought about that?

Unfortunately, some of the finer details were obscured by bulky, well-I-guess-it-used-to-be-pink-once-upon-a-time text that was plastered haphazardly all over the page, advertising things like "Five Best Ways to Deal With Break-ups!", "Meet Duran Duran!" and "77 Looks For Every Body and Budget!", all with copious exclamation marks.

And squashed into the bottom right corner:

"But That's Normal! A Guide to Surviving the Teen Years in 23 Easy Steps."

Sin's whoop for joy startled the vendor into losing at least three layers of dust, but he couldn't quite find it in himself to apologize when he was staring right at the first solid lead in his quest.

After a brief internal debate on what exactly constituted "teenage" and whether or not it applied to almost-four-years-old half-Gears (it did, because Sin was flexible when it came to his own age, smoothly alternating between, "But I'm not even four!" and "Come on, I'm almost four!" depending on the nature of the argument), Sin left the back alley market with a considerably lighter wallet, a spring to his step and a hundred-year-old magazine in his bag, unaware of the tribulations yet to come.

* * *

A few days later, Sin's horizons had expanded considerably. He now knew how to give himself French nails, that high-low hems were totally taboo, and could tell at a glance whether someone was a winter or a spring. He also really, really needed to beef up his sewing kit to try out all the amazing things that could be done with pleats, plaids, prints and plastic (whatever that was). Best of all, he now felt he had a fairly good grasp on what "normal" meant for his kind-of-sort-of-if-you-squint teenage self, and that the 'rents were grievously endangering the results of his field experiment by not doing a single thing the Teen Survival Guide said was integral to the parent-teen relationship.

"…You want me to give you a what?"

Internally, Sin heaved a sigh, both because he was getting pretty good at 'rentspeak and knew when a question served to determine whether or not he was suffering from a debilitating brain injury, and because he was starting to see what the Teen Survival Guide had been talking about. The 'rents simply had no idea how to handle teenagers. Zero sensitivity to his plight right there.

"Curfew, mom," Sin repeated, with that extra overtone that denied the presence of brain injuries. "I'd like you to give me a curfew."

Parent A blinked, apparently unconvinced, but shook a chair free from the maps he'd been poring over in a tactful offer for some life counseling and/or first aid. "Sin, what's the matter? If this is about going out on your own, it's fine as long as you let the team know, remember?"

The team. Under different circumstances, being counted as a full-fledged member of what he'd always thought of as the parental tag-team would have given Sin the warmfuzzies. Well, alright, he was definitely experiencing a major case of the warmfuzzies, but it was screwing up his attempts at experiencing the meaning of normality. Normality, according to the Teen Survival Guide, meant things like curfew and no visitors to his room (or tent, or big wide starry sky) and getting nagged to death about his hair and his clothes and his friends. Parent A, beacon of patience and tolerance that he was, had to be started off slowly.

"But these are my formative years! If you don't start laying into me now, I might turn out like dad! So give me a curfew, pretty please?"

A once-over and a small, amused smile told him that they both knew it could never happen, but Parent A finally relented, shaking his head. "Okay. I'm not sure I get it, but if it's so important to you… from today on, you have to be back and in bed by eleven– "

"Moooom."

"…Ten thirty?"

"Mom."

"Alright, ten."

This time, Sin did sigh out loud. "Come on, mom. Ten isn't exactly draconian."

"And you want me to be… draconian," Parent A said, clearly unable to see the point of the exercise and wondering whether debilitating brain injuries could take on such strangely specific forms. Sin, in turn, was wondering whether he'd misunderstood the role of a Supreme Commander of the Army of the World as a supreme rule-thumping hard-ass.

Apparently, he'd said that out loud, because Parent A pursed his lips in displeasure. "Leadership isn't just about enforcing rules. Especially if these rules serve no purpose. It's also about– "

"Moooom."

"Very well. Sin Kiske, you're under strict orders to be back and in bed by nine o'clock on the dot, and that's my last word on the matter."

Alllright, judging from the way his heels wanted to snap together, he'd definitely underestimated those hard-ass capabilities. The tiny smirk on Parent A's face spared him the embarrassment of an instinctual "yessir! thank you, sir!", though not the certainty that they both knew he'd been this close to blurting it out. Shaking the surprise tension from his shoulders, Sin mustered a grin, spun around, and set out to put the next part of the experiment in motion.

"Awesome, thanks a bunch!"

"You're welcome, I guess." Still slightly bemused, Parent A reached for the maps again and added idly, "And tomorrow, we're going to have an in-depth discussion about the meaning of leadership. Don't be late."

"Eheh."

Gulping, Sin decided on the spot that the experiment would not extend to motherly lessons, ever. He liked his eyebrows where they were, thank you very much.

* * *

After a week, Sin was beginning to doubt the 'rents' commitment to sparklemotion.

He'd been deliberately breaking curfew, first in smaller, then bolder and bolder ways, but the 'rents hadn't said anything. He held out for another couple of days on the vague hope that maybe they were just storing up all their parental outrage for a truly awe-inspiring lecture on trust and responsibility and time-keeping skills, but the 'rents didn't seem at all concerned about his lack of discipline in the matter. At least, Sin supposed, this counted as being misunderstood, even if it didn't seem to be the kind of misunderstood that merited a letter to Deirdre's Advice Column on page seven.

Sullenly, Sin poked at the flames with his flagpole.

They were camped out in a small grove about two days away from the ruins of what had once been called Rome, and which, according to Parent A, used to be quite important because lots of old people with hats used to live there a while back but not anymore (okay, so maybe that wasn't exactly what he'd said, but Sin still didn't really understand religion or why you needed a big hat for it, and apparently if you wore a big hat you weren't allowed to like girls and that just seemed totally stupid). Parent B summarized the importance of Rome in varying combinations of expletives together with cougars, though Sin had yet to see any big cats and didn't get why they were such a problem, either.

At the moment, he wasn't really interested in either mystery, or even what the 'rents were going to do once they got there. All that mattered was that he'd been away until almost midnight yesterday chasing fireflies through the hills (nothing more interesting to be done in the middle of nowhere), and his long-desired scolding still wasn't happening. How was he supposed to become a strong and independent individual without a united front of parental oppression to guide him there?

"This sucks," he declared eventually, kicking dust at the fire to watch it crackle and spark. "You guys could at least try to work with me here."

Across the fire, Parent B glanced up from where he was definitely-not-modding-Parent-A's-sword-into-a-flo wery-pastry-destroyer-or-so-God-help-me, and decided that if he didn't ask, Sin would just sulk some more and then go ahead and tell him anyway, so he might as well get on with the inevitable. "What's that now?"

"What's the point of a curfew if you aren't enforcing it?"

"Because we trust you to stick to agreements and act according to the situation," Parent A said while Parent B was still busy dusting off his speech module.

"But I'm a teenager! You aren't supposed to trust me with anything!"

"Seconded," Parent B said, though he'd told Sin on more than one occasion that he trusted him as far as he could throw him, which Sin knew to be very, very far indeed.

"Where did you get that idea?" Mom said, favoring Dad with a warning look.

"All the books say so," Sin proclaimed, well aware that he was being a little generous with the definitions of "all" and "books" but willing to sacrifice accuracy for the sake of making his point. "I'm trying to develop my personality here. Your job is to keep me from doing that. Kind of like art from adversity, and stuff!"

"Hah!"

There was the muffled sound of an elbow hitting a painful place, before Parent A said gently, "I'm pretty sure those books have got it wrong, Sin."

"Well, uh." Sin paused, wrinkling his brow in thought. "…Well, maybe so, but… they say that's _normal_."

Parent B's scowl was clearly asking, "Your point being?"

"My point being, if I don't figure out what normal is like, then I'll… I'll… I'll be grievously deprived in my development and my vocabulary! You don't wanna stunt the growth of my vocabulary, right?"

"Ye– ow."

"Of course not," Parent A said, and though he hadn't moved, Sin was pretty sure he'd just zapped Dad in the 'nads. "But…"

"But can't we try it out?" Sin was pretty sure all those teens writing to Deirdre's Advice Column had never had such difficulty getting grounded. "Just for a little bit? Until I figure it out?"

"Alright, if it makes you happy, we'll do our best to support you," Parent A said, though Sin was pretty sure the look he was sending Parent B said, "You're not allowed to whack him over the head ever again because look what happens when you do."

"Great!" Sin clapped his hands, which made the flagpole stir up a cloud of celebratory sparks that were well-deserved at this point. "So how about we catch up on yesterday now?"

"I'm… not entirely sure what you mean."

"Punishment, guys. I was three hours late getting back. That's gotta be worth something."

The 'rents shared yet another look, the Dad end of which said the asskick factory was closed until tomorrow and the Mom end of which said that he'd never really gotten any further than a stern talking-to with any of his soldiers, and how did one respond to one's son practically pleading to get yelled at, anyway?

Eventually, the discussion ended with a pointed stare that loosely translated to, "Whatever he just did, I'm one hundred percent convinced it's the result of your Frenchness," before Parent B returned to fiddling with the sword. At least, he was pretending to do so. Sin had gotten pretty good at telling when Dad was genuinely not paying attention to things – which, on account of being a Gear, was almost never – and when he was just hanging back to watch whatever mayhem was threatening to unfold.

After a long silence, Parent A finally retired the death glares and turned his attention to Sin. After an even longer silence, he cleared his throat, drew his eyebrows together and, like sampling a language thrice removed from reality, very carefully enunciated, "Um. Go… to… your room?"

With a loud sigh, Sin buried his head in his hands.

The 'rents, it seemed, were going to need all the help they could get. It was time for a full-on rebellion.

* * *

Staging a rebellion, Sin soon discovered, took a lot more care and planning than he'd thought.

He'd sat through Parent B's quick-n-dirty History 101 (quick because Dad was better at hands-on demonstrations than lectures, dirty because that course had involved a lot of mud and swearing) and Parent A's Politics and Negotiations (101 by Mom's count, 201 by Sin's because he was still convinced most problems could be resolved with the killer tactic of puppy-dog eyes).

Hence, he had a pretty good grasp on how a run-of-the-mill rebellion happened and how it tended to get out of hand really quickly because everyone involved was mad at each other. He knew considerably less about teenage rebellion, though judging from the kinds of questions in Deirdre's Advice Column, there were a couple of similarities.

Getting mad about stuff was hard, though, not least because Sin found it to be kind of a waste of time when he could be fixing things instead (especially because "fixing things" usually involved a pie at some point). Since there wasn't anything to be mad about, he couldn't even pick a purpose for his rebellion, other than to get the 'rents to dole out some good old-fashioned parental oppression.

He'd pretty much ruled out rebelling against the handful of iron commandments the 'rents _did_ lay down, even if it went against the things the Teen Survival Guide suggested. Given the kinds of problems it dealt with, none of the writers seemed like they needed to climb out of megadeath gullets very much, and Sin liked being not in pain and people being not dead entirely too much to do something as dumb as, say, whipping off his limiter in front of a crowd of terrified peasants.

Just because he was rebelling didn't mean he had to be stupid about it.

That left him with trying to find something that could shock and scandalize the 'rents without summoning mortal peril to their more-often-than-not metaphorical front step – a formidable task indeed, given that Dad was Dad and Mom had been putting up with Dad for something like twelve years running. Perhaps he needed to think smaller. For a start, every rebellion needed a motto, and a flag on which to paint said motto, even if it was a rebellion of no specific purpose.

His mind made up, Sin spread out his flag on the ground and went about locating his set of glitter fabric markers, courtesy of Uncle Axl's mad future-past skills.

Once he got the basics of the business down, the ideas were sure to come flooding in.

* * *

"The Rebellion of… No Specific Purpose."

"Yup!" Sin beamed, waving the flag to show off his noble cause in all its sparkling, technicolor glory.

Parent A had paused in checking the supplies for the upcoming job and was squinting at him in what Sin chose to think of as disbelief, but which was actually closer to mild bafflement.

"Really? That's the part that gets you?" Parent B said, pointedly not looking at Sin as he marched into the other room to retrieve his sword.

"It's the only part I could safely look at," Parent A shot back, squinting against a burst of brightness when the morning sun chose to lend a hand with the special effects.

Entirely too pleased with himself, Sin did a little twirl, causing the walls of the inn to light up in a kaleidoscope of colors as every rhinestone, metal stud and sequin got its moment in the limelight.

"Whatever it is you're doing, stop it," Parent B's voice came floating through the closed door. "I swear I can fucking hear you through the wall."

"Sparkling doesn't make a noise," Parent A pointed out reasonably, though Sin noticed with no small amount of delight that a frown was beginning to edge onto his face.

All those days and nights he'd spent hunting down the raw materials and pricking his fingers were finally starting to pay off. It was killing two birds with one stone, even – he'd been dying to recreate some of those inspiring outfits from the magazine, and the Teen Survival Guide had been pretty clear that a new and individualized wardrobe was a surefire way to offend his elders. The 'rents, who were all about practicality and not calling out your attacks and not doing triple backflips unless absolutely necessary (read: never), were sure not to take this disruption of their austerity quietly.

"Well, I was gonna add some more hoops but I figured they'd kinda drag down the whole design," Sin admitted, tugging at the lapels of his new jacket to make the fringes swoosh and sway. The stuffed shoulders were a little bit uncomfortable for moving around, and the weird, shiny pre-war fabric was quite stiff, but he was sure to get the hang of it soon.

"Are you, uh, sure you want to keep wearing that?" Parent A asked, and Sin somewhat generously chose to interpret his doubtful tone as the first step to being properly horrified.

"Yup!"

"I meant in battle."

"Yup!"

"…Alright, then."

"No, not alright," the door said before Sin had time to deflate. "We're talking acid wash here. That is never alright."

"Oh? Are you shocked?" Sin asked, perking up at the possibility of invoking the ire of the infinitely less patient Parent B.

The door seemed to consider this. "…It's you. So, no, not really."

"Scandalized?"

"No."

"Ready to ground me and confiscate my phone and take away my Nintendo?" Sin asked hopefully, because if there was one thing Parent B could be counted on, it was head-thumps for all situations.

The door opened again to reveal Parent B's thunderous scowl, though it was less the one that promised grievous bodily harm and more the one that signaled an oncoming migraine. "Do you even know what any of that is."

"Uh, punishment?" Sin said, though he was just guessing at this point. Judging from the teens writing to Deirdre, phones and Nintendos were just one step below vital organs in importance, so taking them away basically meant throwing a fish on dry land, leaving teens to listlessly flop around their bedrooms.

"Right." Parent B seemed to relax a little.

"So?"

"Considering it."

"Sol, you can't punish him for… this. Whatever this is," Parent A said, completely failing to understand that such things were part of his promise to be supportive. His frown deepened as he stared at the collection of straps and multicolored strings that were holding Sin's pants together. "I mean, how do you even put this _on_?"

"Stop encouraging him."

"I'm not encouraging him, I'm just saying we should assess the extent of the– "

"Damage?" Sin volunteered, grinning.

"Not what I was going to say, but yes," Parent A said, slipping past Parent B with one of those indecipherable looks. "If I'm right, by the time this job is over, this will have worked itself out."

* * *

The job should have been simple enough. Small town, Gear plague, lots of terrified farmers and their pretty daughters who needed someone to save their crops. It was one of those assignments that didn't even need all three of them, except it was quicker that way and apparently one of Mom's associates wanted to talk to them. Sin wasn't entirely sure what had tipped the 'rents off to this secret message, whether it was the "help" part or the "Gears" part, but who was he to complain about action?

"YEOWCH OW OW OW!"

Part of Sin found the time to be impressed with this expansion of his own vocal range, while the rest of him, primarily his lower half, most decidedly was _not_.

"Hey! Stupid! That's not– OW!"

The Megadeath eyed him placidly, before deciding that the best course of action was to ignore its noisy superior-in-every-way-except-not-currently prey and continue dragging him through the dust by the hem of his pants.

"Hey! It's not like I– mind having– legs or anything! Let go!"

Sin managed to get the lacings on one of his pant legs unstuck from the Gear's front teeth and did his best to deliver a kick to its jaw. The lightning spell fizzled out against its thick hide, but getting a boot stuck up its nostril at least made it grunt in surprise.

"Alright, buddy, you asked for it! I'm not gonna pull my punches– HEY!"

With a weak cracking sound, the see-through belt with the sparkling buckle started to give, readying his pants for their inevitable descent into a smelly Gear maw. Sin dearly would have liked to make good on his threat, except the shiny pre-war fabric had gotten thoroughly soaked with sweat and spit during the fight and had shrunk enough to cut off the circulation to his arms. He couldn't even get his elbows to bend enough to reach for the stupid eyepatch and go to town.

Maybe it was time to resort to drastic measures.

"...Mom? Dad? Help?"

* * *

Unbeknownst to Sin, help had finished steering the rest of the herd away from the delicious temptation of the wheat fields and was now camped out a safe distance away, watching the proceedings from the shade of a tree with an air of barely contained mirth.

After a few minutes of watching his son flail around in a graceless heap, Sol shot Ky a sidelong glance. "So this is what you meant when you said it's gonna work itself out."

"My thinking was more along the lines of him getting tangled in the underbrush with those ridiculous straps, but yes, this works, too."

In the plain, a particularly ill-conceived RTL caused Sin to light up like a Christmas tree. The Gear staggered briefly, squinted, and went back to attacking the pants with renewed vigor.

"…Mom? Dad? A little help here?"

Shaking his head to get rid of the sudden whining noise in his ear, Sol snorted. "Heh. Even nature wants the eighties to stay dead."

"Wait a moment," Ky said, tilting his head the way he always did when he was gauging Sol's sincerity on the subject of ages past. "You mean, that was a thing? People really used to wear stuff like that once upon a time?"

"Yes."

"Of their own free will?"

"God, yes."

"Even you?"

"..."

Before Ky could press for further details, a distinctly more pleading "Mom? Dad? …Guys?" came floating towards them.

In the plain, the Gear had managed to snap most of the plastic belts in an effort that was starting to look less and less like an angry mauling of an eye-searing pair of pants, and more like a surgical procedure.

"Think we should go help him?" Ky asked, pity starting to win out over his amusement.

"Nah. Doesn't look like it's hurting much except the brat's pride."

"…Actually, what _is_ it doing?"

Sol shrugged. "Beats me, but I like it."

There was the long, drawn-out sound of fabric tearing at the seams before the Gear threw its head in the air with a triumphant bellow, and carried the glittering atrocity off in its jaws. A short while later, Sin came stumbling towards them, newly pantsless and pouting.

"You guys suck. You guys suck so hard."

He struggled with his jacket, every single fringe of which was now dripping in Gear saliva, and gave up when he realized that trying to peel it off his arms to preserve the sad remnants of his dignity might mean he'd have to peel it off his waist later.

"Consider it a lesson," Ky said. "Apparently that type reacts to... visual stimuli."

"That's one way to put it," Sol said, jerking his chin in the direction of the Gear, which was now wading back to its herd on the other side of the river.

As they watched, a smaller, less aggressively colored Gear broke away from the group and trotted up to meet the pants thief, who bowed his head and offered up the tattered, soaked mess of rhinestones for inspection.

"Is that…?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I think it is."

On the riverbank, the pants thief was now getting the muzzle-licking of his life, his tail twitching back and forth in profound satisfaction.

"Oh man," Sin groaned, leaning on his flagpole. "Well… I guess it's not all bad. My pants got a guy a date."

* * *

A few weeks later found Sin in a state of profound despondency.

Granted, maintaining that state of despondency was a bit difficult for someone with such a sunny disposition, but Sin was nothing if not determined to communicate his distress. Since the 'rents didn't seem to think much of the fact that their son had taken to slumping over and staring listlessly into space, Sin figured he was now allowed to consider himself both misunderstood and neglected (though it was hard to really wring a decently dramatic diary entry from it).

Still, the situation was more than a little frustrating. Thanks to the 'rents' lack of support, he was no closer to understanding what it was like to be normal, and what was worse, he was running out of ideas.

After the resounding failure that had been his new wardrobe, he'd tried giving himself an offensive haircut. It had seemed like a brilliant plan right until he remembered that half of his parentage had command over the ur-mullet and the other half had stories about people whose hair could double as a stabbing weapon, and by then, he was stuck headfirst in a bucket of glitter, glue, wall paint and immense regret.

Then he'd tested out the thing that was called "being bad at school" to even more disastrous results. It was going fine at first – he'd gotten pretty good at the apathetic stare, he'd fine-tuned his selective hearing, and he was enjoying an awesome daydream (the one with the giant octopus that turned into takoyaki for life). Then he went to bed and discovered that his brain was a filthy, filthy traitor who didn't appreciate being deprived of knowledge one bit. After three utterly sleepless nights filled with word-for-word replays of every parental lesson he'd ever received, Sin figured that being genetically unable not to pay attention was punishment enough.

Finally, he'd tried dating. Dating, he'd read, was one of the biggest sources of parent-teen disputes and it involved hanging out with girls besides, which was never not awesome. (It should be noted, in the interest of full disclosure, that Sin thought helping to carry a girl's shopping bags qualified as dating, and would soon be very surprised to learn that it didn't).

When he'd broken the news to the 'rents, there'd been a minute of dead silence, which had foolishly given Sin hope.

Then Parent A had said "Oh," in the tone of someone who'd received an unexpected invitation to dinner, and Parent B had ground out something along the lines of "Isn't that swell," which still sounded promising. Instead of doling out swift, merciless and above all utterly normal punishment, the 'rents shared yet another one of those long, annoyingly meaningful looks.

"Is this supposed to happen?"

"You're asking _me_."

"It just seems rather early, that's all. Well. Perhaps we should do something about it, then."

"Yeah, uh, like ground me?" Sin suggested, only to be entirely ignored.

Parent B's expression was approaching that of an affronted whale shark. "You do something. I'm not gonna tell him how to make more of himself."

"As you're so fond of pointing out, I was raised in a Catholic army," Parent A said, examining his nails. "I'm sure your worldly ways make you much better suited to handling this."

"You're a vindictive little bastard, you know that?"

"I'm quite certain of my parentage, thank you."

Perhaps the sly undertone should have tipped Sin off that Something Very Bad was about to happen, but since Parent B was still looking properly steamed and stomping towards the Den of Pestilence, Chaos and Mad, Bad Science, he'd followed eagerly to receive what was shaping up to be a spectacular tongue-lashing.

It had taken him the better part of the day to stop screaming.

With a groan, Sin buried his head between his knees in the vain hope of blocking out the memories of various detailed anatomical models and the utterly bizarre things they could be used for.

Although the systematic destruction of his innocence was a terribly effective deterrent, it was more Parent B-style vengeance than anything approaching normal parental oppression. After all, normal parents were supposed to be terribly squeamish about the matter (not that Sin could blame them).

In any case, he wasn't sure he could survive another experiment gone awry, so maybe it was better to abandon his pursuit and live with the knowledge that there was one word he would never, ever understand and forever use in total ignorance.

The pop of a cosmic laundry chute put an end to his pity party.

"Whoaaa look ouuuu– ow!"

If there was one thing that could be said about Uncle Axl's time-traveling stunts, it was that they never got boring.

Sin spent a moment goggling at the sight of his enviably accurate and most definitely painful imitation of the King Pigeon Pose, before deciding that it was probably best to lend a hand.

"Ow. Ow ow, careful, ou– oh. Hey." Uncle Axl took a minute to carefully wriggle each limb and check whether his journey through the mysterious void of mystery had managed to fuse any of his body parts together. "Will you look at that, I can see my toes again. Last time I'm flying economy class, I swear. Thanks a million– oh, hey lil' buddy! Long time no see! Or short time no see. I can never tell. How's it hangin'?"

"It's hangin' in there," Sin said, or tried to, since Uncle Axl's enthusiastic hair-ruffling was dragging each vowel up and down until he sounded like one of Dad's skipping records.

"Aw, man. I'm gone for, what, two centuries, and that's my welcome?" Axl said, though his expression turned serious when Sin just shuffled his feet. "Must be some heavy stuff if it's got you moping like that, huh, lil' buddy? You having a fight with your folks or something?"

"I _wish_."

"Well, that's normal at your age, isn't it? You're like, what– "

Sin blinked. "You know what normal is?"

Axl stopped trying to solve the crazy math surrounding Sin's age with his fingers, and blinked back. "I… think? I mean, doesn't everyone?"

"I don't!"

"Oh. Um…"

"And Mom and Dad won't help me at all! They won't be shocked or scandalized and they especially won't ground me or yell at me or disapprove of my friends or stick me in remedial classes or–"

"Whoa, whoa, slow down, lil' buddy," Axl said, waving his hands. "You want your folks to act like control freaks? Why?"

"It's how parents are supposed to be! Normal."

"Uh."

"I read it in a magazine," Sin said, folding his arms and nodding sagely.

"Well…"

"Point is, it's not working. And it works even less when they're just doing it to humor me! I'll never figure out what it's like to be caged and oppressed and psychologically tortured–"

"…what?"

"You know, _normal_."

Axl coughed and scratched the back of his head. "Well. If that's really what you want… I kinda doubt the usual stuff's gonna work on your folks. Balls of steel, and all that. And the future doesn't have nearly enough bike tires. Hang on."

After turning a couple of pockets inside out, he produced a small, square, cherry-red device. "I was gonna prank the bossman with this, but now you can have it."

Sin tilted it, gave it a little shake, and poked at the dial in the middle. "What's it do?"

"Let me put it this way. With your idea of normality, this baby's a surefire way to experience the real deal."

* * *

It was a peaceful morning the day Sin implemented his plan.

The timing was crucial, since the combination of Kiske work ethic and Badguy everything meant there was rarely a peaceful moment to be found, much less one that would allow him to catch the 'rents by surprise.

Today, however, Lady Luck was smiling upon him.

Their current safe house seemed to be, indeed, safe (not that it bothered Sin too much when it wasn't). Parent A was engrossed in some light reading – the legal texts of ages past, because Parent A had his own ideas on what constituted "light reading" – and pretending that his lap wasn't serving as a comfortable head rest for Parent B, who in turn was pretending he wasn't using it as such.

There was a tea set on the table instead of a mountain of battle maps. There were no wary glances towards the front door and its tendency to be flung open by the panicked, the desperate or the really very murderous. There wasn't even a sword anywhere in sight, which meant they were parked at the other end of the couch, two full arm's lengths away, the furthest they ever got to being out of reach.

Nodding to himself, Sin disappeared back upstairs.

It had taken him a bit to figure out how to get the tiny, cherry-red thing to make sufficient noise, though from the way Uncle Axl had glanced around nervously when he'd helped to hook it up to the big boxes, even the lowest setting would have had the same effect.

Sin, however, was determined to go about this the normal teenage way, so he shut down the part of his brain responsible for enhanced hearing, spun the little dial, and unleashed upon the world a sound unheard in more than two-hundred years.

* * *

To appreciate the entire devilish brilliance of Sin's plan, one had to be aware that the house of Kiske-Badguy was a house of rock.

The Badguy half of it lived rock, breathed rock, was looking to replace all his red blood cells with rock, and had once, on a drunken Saturday night some centuries ago, attempted to propose to a cardboard cut-out of the embodiment of rock.

The Kiske half had a sort of distant fascination with rock for its ability to give the world moon-eyed Badguy and misty-eyed Badguy, and sometimes, when the right band was playing, downright religious Badguy. He was the only future-born person who knew what a Fender Stratocaster was and why it was the most glorious, godliest instrument on Earth, and who could name all the reasons why any band post-1990 was nothing but a couple of posers (though his deepest, darkest secret remained that he couldn't quite understand the difference between Queen and Nickelback and why it was so very, very important).

So what it came down to was one person who was tentatively used to the sound of guitar riffs and drum solos. The other felt secure in the knowledge that he was preserving the legacy of the Gods of Rock'n'Roll, and that all those lesser forms of music had thankfully, at last, been razed from the face of the planet.

It truly was the perfect stage for the sound that came hissing down the stairs like a ruinous gust of wind.

"_ICE ICE BABY~~_"

Sin had done well to remain at the top of the stairs, because Parent A went from leaning back on the couch to fully armed and combat-ready in the blink of an eye. After a few seconds, the thumping bass kicked in, gloriously amplified and familiar enough for Parent A to lower his sword and sigh.

"…Sin?"

Right on cue, Sin surfaced from behind the handrail in what he thought was a fairly apt rendition of a stage dancer. "Ye~es?"

"_ICE ICE BABY~~_," the singer hissed again.

"This," Parent A said flatly, not even bothering to raise his voice. "Whatever in the high heavens it is. Stop it."

"Ehh? Sorry Mom, I can't hear you!" Sin yelled back, which wasn't even that far from the truth since he was busy making up dance moves to match the thrum of the bass. "Maybe it'd help to–"

"Murders," the other side of the couch supplied. "Horrible murders."

The violently ejected Parent B resurfaced, wiping blood from his nostrils, his grip on the Fuenken slowly turning white-knuckled.

Sin wanted to clap in glee.

It had been a long time since Parent B had last found it necessary to make white-knuckled fists.

"Hey now, I'm expanding my horizons!" Two steps forward, one step back, bounce a little on the balls of both feet to match the rhythm of the rapid-fire lyrics. He was getting pretty good at this. "Who knew the past had such awesome beats? I mean, with the stuff you always listen to…"

"_What_."

"Yeah, no rhythm, no style. How are you supposed to dance to that?" Sin paused, grinned, and dropped the ultimate bombshell in self-expression. "Honestly, Queen is sooo passé."

The magazine had equipped him with all the knowledge necessary to bring about this moment.

It had schooled him in the day-to-day annoyances of teen-ages past and all the wonderful (if somewhat hazardous) avenues of personality development. It had informed him that normal parents had strongly averse reactions to loud parties, that they didn't appreciate having their values challenged, and that they were convinced the wrong kind of music could turn children into juvenile delinquents (whatever that was).

The magazine had _not_ equipped him with the knowledge that a parent could make the noise that was currently clawing its way out of Parent B's throat.

It was a noise only matched by that of a liopleurodon that had been flung from the depths of its ocean home and onto dry land, howling its blind rage against the sky even as it was choking on the air.

Sin had never heard that sound in his life, not even when one of Dad's funny machines had eaten the last remaining tape copy of Sheer Heart Attack, but he knew he had maybe a nanosecond before some serious discipline was going to be coming his way.

The first fraction of that nanosecond went to glancing at Parent A, who was giving him a look usually reserved for Parent B, one that roughly translated to "You have to be fucking kidding me," along with undertones that seriously questioned the recipient's sanity.

Sin took the second fraction to enjoy the swell of pride at having earned a Dad-exclusive look, and to congratulate himself on the rousing success of his plan.

The third fraction of that nanosecond never really came to pass, because it was the moment the Fuenken burst into flames, and Sin decided to leg it like he'd never legged it before.

* * *

From a very early age, Ky Kiske had learned to treasure the little things in life.

During the war, this had meant a full four hours of sleep, dry feet, and having a convenient and fairly amoral fire user nearby who didn't mind orchestrating the disappearance of inconvenient paperwork. After the war, his understanding of the little things had broadened to include a cup of tea boiled to perfection, a good book, and a neighborhood bake sale, all three of which he was determined to enjoy to the fullest regardless of the circumstances.

Even when the circumstances were hurtling straight at his face.

Ky wet one fingertip to turn the page, glanced up, and watched some flaming shrubbery bounce off in a ripple of blue-green light.

The tea was getting just a tiny bit cool.

So were the waffles, due to the absence of a convenient and fairly amoral fire user, but he knew he couldn't have everything.

Across the clearing, his son narrowly avoided being neutered by a wooden beam, though it seemed to do little to dampen his mood. He cheered and backflipped over the remains of the kitchen counter, far too gleeful to even bother doing much of anything to keep the source of all the flying chunks of scenery away.

"Yay, I'm being oppressed!"

The kitchen counter exploded.

"Thanks so much, Dad!"

So did what was left of the staircase.

Heaving a sigh, Ky made a mental note to compose a formal apology to his First Lieutenant and tell him to deduct the repair costs from his paycheck. He hesitated for a moment, before making another mental note to ensure that the Lieutenant wouldn't be using his own.

A nervous cough drew his attention away from apologies and books to catch sight of Axl ducking out from behind a very large and sturdy-looking oak, his eyes widening as he surveyed the extent of the damage.

"Uh."

"Good morning," Ky said, and opened a man-shaped gap in the barrier to allow Axl entry. "Tea?"

"Uh." After a brief pause, Axl sat down in the grass, and gave a high-pitched giggle. "Wow. They're sure going at it, huh."

"I think that was the goal of the exercise," Ky said, pouring a second cup. "Milk?"

"Oh. Erm. I'm good, thanks."

If his fidgeting was anything to go by, Axl was counting his blessings to be able to say that.

"Here you are, then," Ky said, and held the cup out to him.

He would have liked to say that politeness was the reason he chose not to inquire after Axl's obvious guilt and what on Earth had possessed him to take part in one of Sin's schemes, but the truth was, he had waffles.

Waffles, even lukewarm ones, were infinitely more important than trying to figure out the lapses in judgment that had led to the present situation. Some things were best explained by the fact that Axl and Sin could be disconcertingly similar at times, since, as Sol liked to put it, they had the basic personality of an Irish Setter.

"Thanks." Axl shifted, relaxing slightly, and helped himself to a healthy amount of sugar. "Erm, sorry about the house. I, uh, didn't think the bossman would blow up quite like that."

"Sin is fairly good at managing that sort of thing on his own. At the rate he's been going, this was only a matter of time. I'm just glad it's not happening in a densely populated area."

"You're… pretty calm about all of this," Axl said, ducking his head when a shower of burning shingles came raining down around them.

Ky considered this, and shrugged. "They both know not to aim for the tea set."

"Um." For a moment, it looked like Axl was contemplating shifting outside of the barrier again. "You won't tell the boss, will you?"

"I– "

The ground rocked with another explosion. From the other side of the clearing, a column of smoke was rising up, along with Sin's now breathless voice. "Hey. Hey, dad? I think I get it now. The normal parent-teenager thing. You can sto–"

A tree uprooted itself, swung around in an arch, and hit something with a thud.

"Ow."

A flash of white made it clear that the thud had been Sin, now struggling to free himself from a raspberry patch. "Dad? Peace offering? Agreement of mutual respect and all that?"

The rest of the attempt at parley was swallowed by a roar and the bone-wrenching sound that marked the appearance of a pair of huge black wings, which in turn marked the disappearance of Sol's last intact attire.

Rolling his eyes, Ky spooned some milk into his own cup. Perhaps that was why he didn't feel the need to intervene – with so much overreaction to go around, somebody had to be the center of zen to keep the universe in balance.

Granted, insulting Sol's favorite music wasn't exactly a bright idea even by Sin's standards, who thought that subtlety and refinement were accidents that happened to other people, but still. Sol knew an obvious ruse when he saw one, and as far as Ky was concerned, the interruption hardly merited the literal and metaphorical headache of a Dragon Install.

"Ow ow ow ow! Dad?! Not by the belt hoops! Daaaaaa–ack!"

A particularly melodious yip told him Sin would be needing new pants, as well. Beside him, Axl winced in the manner of someone who knew what was happening and was wishing he didn't.

"Hey, hey, dad, you can't! That's on loan!"

Under normal circumstances, Ky was sure he wouldn't have been able to hear a clawed fist crushing a small, cherry-red piece of blacktech that might or might not have fallen through a hole in time, but for some reason, he was able to hear every circuit being ground to the consistency of moon dust.

"That's so cruel! I'm gonna tell Mom! Mom? Mooom! Dad's being _too normal_!"

Shaking his head, Ky turned back to Axl. "I won't say anything. There's one thing I'd like to know, though. Why that song?"

"It's kind of a long story," Axl said, glancing between him and the smoking patch of forest.

The ground shook yet again, but more faintly, since the caster was still far too intent on making his spells look cool instead of making them do anything useful. "I've got plenty of time."

"Uh, well then. It all started with the 1990s, and this little thing called Vanilla Ice…"

.

.

-Fin-


End file.
